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This was a buzz book at Frankfurt 2016, and was sold at auctions across Europe.

JENNIFER ZEYNAB JOUKHADAR The Map of Salt and Stars

For fans of The Kite Runner, a moving, magical novel about of one syrian girl’s journey to find her way home.

Nour has been living with her parents and sister in America, but when Nour’s father dies from cancer, her mother decides she wants to be close to her relatives and moves the family back to Homs. Grieving for her father, Nour draws strength from the stories he told her, especially of Rawiya, who became apprenticed to Muhammad al-Idrisi, the famous twelfth century cartographer tasked with making the first map of the world.

Rawiya, together with al-Idrisi, travelled the globe, encountering adventures – including the mythical Roc and a battle in the Valley of Snakes – along the way. It is this story that gives Nour the courage to keep going when she has to leave Homs after it is bombed, and faces a long journey as a refugee in search of a new home –a journey that closely mirrors that of Rawiya many centuries before.

When Nour and her sister are forced to part from their mother, she gives them a special map that contains clues that will lead them to safety.

Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar, like her protagonist, is the daughter of a Muslim father and a Syrian Christian mother. Originally trained as a research scientist, she now writes full time.